Two men face prison for failing to report find of valuable silver coins

Brno, March 21 (CTK) - A 39-year-old man is prosecuted for having concealed the find of a jar with thousands of historical silver coins in a forest on Zlatnik hill near Boskovice, south Moravia, in 2010, detective Zdenka Kylianova, investigating the case, told CTK Thursday.

The man sold the coins to a collector who did not report it either. Both men are being prosecuted now.

If the finder reported the hoard to authorities, he would be entitled to a reward amounting to 10 percent of its value.

However, now both men face up to five years in prison if found guilty.

The collector's value of the coins from the 15th to 17th centuries is put at some 1.1 million crowns, but its historical value is much higher.

Someone probably buried the hoard in the ground in a local forest during the Thirty Years' War.

The jar originally continued about six kilos of silver coins most of which were sold out on the black market afterwards.

The police succeeded in tracing only 2267 coins weighing 1.6 kilos in total, Dagmar Grossmannova, from the Moravian Land Museum, said.